Thursday, June 30, 2016

A Letter of Keats

Two years later, in 1818, Keats wrote to Reynolds 'I long to feast on old Homer ... If you understood Greek and would read me passages, now and then, explaining their meaning, 'twould be, from its mustiness, perhaps a greater luxury than reading the thing one's self.'31

31 Keats Letters I, 239, Feb. 1818.

Goldhill doesn't identify which edition of Keats' Letters he's using.

From the Look Inside! feature on amazon.com, I find a slightly different version of the quotation in Hyder Edward Rollins, ed., The Letters of John Keats, Vol. I: 1814-1818 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1958; rpt. 2011), p. 274 (dated April 27, 1818; footnote omitted):

I long to feast upon old Homer, as we have upon Shakespeare, and as I have lately upon Milton.—if you understood Greek, and would read me passages, now and then, explaining their meaning, 't would be, from its mistiness, perhaps a greater luxury than reading the thing one's self.—I shall be happy when I can do the same for you.

The quotation in Maurice Buxton Forman's edition is close to that in Rollins' edition (upon and mistiness, versus Goldhill's on and mustiness), and the date is the same, April 27, 1818 (not Goldhill's Feb. 1818).

Dreary Hours

Lexicons, by what we have said, are to beginners almost as noxious as grammars. Every one who knows Greek in the end, must remember well how dreary have been the hours which he has spent upon the simply mechanical exercise of turning over leaves, with his eye fixed upon the heading of the page. It is monotonous, it is unintellectual, it is distasteful in the highest degree; and there is not a public schoolmaster in the kingdom who has the courage and the benevolence to dispense with it. Lexicons must no doubt exist, for they are needed in many ways; but there is no worse way of discovering the English equivalent of a simple word than looking it out in a dictionary. It is better to have a glossary; it is better to ask a teacher; it is better even to have a literal translation: better, simply because these methods do not waste the time of the learner, and do not spoil his temper. In his first book of Homer, an average boy will look out somewhere between two and three thousand words in his lexicon, and spend, on a moderate computation, from forty to fifty hours in the search. Grievous, however, as his waste of time in this direction is, it is work of the fingers alone; the lessons of Grammar that he learns will torture his brains as much, and will not even give him
the satisfaction of feeling in the end that he has gained his grain of knowledge. He will have done something, it is true; he will not have been idle; he will have done as hard work as people do who turn a treadmill.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Rage Against the Hyphen

I want to say — and I cannot say too often — any man who carries a hyphen about with him, carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready. If I can catch any man with a hyphen in this great contest I will know that I have got an enemy of the Republic.

For my part, I think the most un-American thing in the world is a hyphen. I do not care what it is that comes before the word "American." It may be a German-American, or an Italian-American, a Swedish-American, or an Anglo-American, or an Irish-American. It does not make any difference what comes before the "American," it ought not to be there, and every man who comes to take counsel with me with a hyphen in his conversation I take no interest in whatever. The entrance examination, to use my own parlance, into my confidence is, "Where do you put America in your thoughts? Do you put it first, always first, unquestionably first?" Then we can sit down together and talk, but not otherwise.

That settles that matter, and even some of my fellow countrymen who insist upon keeping a hyphen in the middle of their names ought to be satisfied with that. Though I must admit that I do not care to argue anything with a hyphen. A man that puts anything else before the word "American" is no comrade of mine, and yet I am willing even to discomfit him with a statement of fact.

Update from Dave Berg:

You might be interested to know that Roosevelt, who greatly disliked Wilson, held the same opinions on hyphenation.

We welcome the German or the Irishman who becomes an American. We have no use for the German or Irishman who remains such. We do not wish German-Americans and Irish-Americans who figure as such in our social and political life; we want only Americans, and, provided they are such, we do not care whether they are of native or of Irish or of German ancestry. We have no room in any healthy American community for a German-American vote or an Irish-American vote, and it is contemptible demagogy to put planks into any party platform with the purpose of catching such a vote. We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans and nothing else. Forum, April 1894, found in Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia, CD edition, pp. 15-16.

I do not believe in hyphenated Americans. I do not believe in German-Americans or Irish-Americans; and I believe just as little in English-Americans. Metropolitan, October 1915, TR Cyclopedia, p. 16.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

The Working Collection of a Scholar

John Buchan (1875-1940), The Three Hostages, chapter V:

He opened a door and ushered me into an enormous room, which
must have occupied the whole space on that floor. It was oblong,
with deep bays at each end, and it was lined from floor to ceiling
with books. Books, too, were piled on the tables, and sprawled on a
big flat couch which was drawn up before the fire. It wasn't an
ordinary gentleman's library, provided by the bookseller at so much
a yard. It was the working collection of a scholar, and the books had
that used look which makes them the finest tapestry for a room. The
place was lit with lights on small tables, and on a big desk under a
reading lamp were masses of papers and various volumes with
paper slips in them. It was workshop as well as library.

NO adv.1 + SEE v. + 'EM, variant of 'EM pron., with allusion to the diminutive size of the insects.

A goropist might instead derive noo-see-um from the insect species Simulium nocivum, although Thoreau rejected this etymology in his
Maine Woods:

Here first I was molested by the little midge called the No-see-em (Simulium nocivum, the latter word is not the Latin for no-see-em), especially over the sand at the water's edge, for it is a kind of sand-fly.

He was by no means alone in his patriotic claim that the Germanic family of languages had most faithfully of all preserved the good qualities of the lingua adamica. He mentions one of his predecessors when suggesting that use could be made of etymological investigations to reconstruct the early history of the origins and relationships of various peoples; great caution, however, is needed here, he says, and no etymology should be accepted without a great deal of corroborative evidence — 'autrement c'est Goropizer'. This verb means to make up 'Etymologies étranges et souvent ridicules', like those of Goropius Becanus, a sixteenth-century writer on language.

Goropius Becanus (Jan van Gorp) in his Origines Antwerpianae of 1569 agreed with all claims made about the divine inspiration of the original language, and about its motivated and non-arbitrary relation between words and things. According to him there was only a single living language in which this motivated concordance existed to an exemplary degree; that language was Dutch, particularly the dialect of Antwerp. The ancestors of the burghers of Antwerp were the Cimbri, the direct descendants of the sons of Japheth. These had not been present under the Tower of Babel, and, consequently, they had been spared the confusio linguarum. Thus they had preserved the language of Adam in all its perfection. Such an assertion, Becanus claimed, could be proved by etymological demonstrations. He produced a string of arguments whose level of etymological wishful thinking matched those of Isidore and Guichard; they later became known as 'becanisms' or 'goropisms'.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Religion and Magic

Eitrem also paid at least lip-service to the view that religion and magic differ fundamentally.
Eiliv Skard,9 a former pupil of Eitrem and my teacher of Greek philosophy, showed enthusiastically how the great Festugière,10 invited to Oslo by Eitrem, had demonstrated the difference by just two gestures — folded hands for religion: «Thy will be done»; grasping hands for magic: «Let me have it!»

The Sinister Sound of Ecclesiastical Language

"I might be bored in Parliament," he reflected, "but I should love the
rough‐and‐tumble of an election. I only once took part in one, and I
discovered surprising gifts as a demagogue and made a speech in
our little town which is still talked about. The chief row was about
Irish Home Rule, and I thought I'd better have a whack at the Pope.
Has it ever struck you, Dick, that ecclesiastical language has a most
sinister sound? I knew some of the words, though not their meaning,
but I knew that my audience would be just as ignorant. So I had a
magnificent peroration. 'Will you men of Kilclavers,' I asked, 'endure
to see a chasuble set up in your market‐place? Will you have your
daughters sold into simony? Will you have celibacy practised in the
public streets?' Gad, I had them all on their feet bellowing 'Never!'"

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Strangeness

The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, the animals, the wind, and rain, and sun, and stars are never strange to me; for I am in and of and am one with them; and my flesh and the soil are one, and the heat in my blood and in the sunshine are one, and the winds and tempests and my passions are one. I feel the "strangeness" only with regard to my fellow men, especially in towns, where they exist in conditions unnatural to me, but congenial to them; where they are seen in numbers and in crowds, in streets and houses, and in all places where they gather together; when I look at them, their pale civilised faces, their clothes, and hear them eagerly talking about things that do not concern me. They are out of my world—the real world. All that they value, and seek and strain after all their lives long, their works and sports and pleasures, are the merest baubles and childish things; and their ideals are all false, and nothing but by-products, or growths, of the artificial life—little funguses cultivated in heated cellars.

In such moments we sometimes feel a kinship with, and are strangely drawn to, the dead, who were not as these; the long, long dead, the men who knew not life in towns, and felt no strangeness in sun and wind and rain.

The Immense Labors of Men

When, on the one hand, one considers the immense labors of men, so many sciences searched into, so many arts invented, and so many forces employed, abysses filled up, mountains razed, rocks broken, rivers made navigable, lands cleared, lakes dug, marshes drained, enormous buildings raised upon the earth, the sea covered with ships and sailors; and when, on the other hand, one searches with a little meditation for the true advantages that have resulted from all this for the happiness of the human species, one cannot help being struck by the astonishing disproportion that obtains between these things, and to deplore man's blindness, which, to feed his foolish pride and who knows what vain sense of self-importance, makes him run ardently after all the miseries to which he is susceptible, and which beneficent nature has taken pains to keep from him.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Real Men versus Sissies

We are a species tough from the roots. We carry our new-borns
Straight to the rivers to toughen them up in the cold and the water.
Boyhood means staying awake to go hunting, exhausting the forests. 605
Playtime is breaking in horses and firing off shafts with a horn bow.
Youth means dealing with work, getting used to a bare-bones existence,
Taming the earth with a rake or shaking up towns in a battle.
Steel grinds our life's every stage; our prod for the ox's
Back when it's tired is our spear-shaft reversed. Old age, as it slows us, 610
Can't either lessen our strength or diminish our vigour of spirit.
We hide our grey hairs with our helmets, delight in importing,
Even then, fresh fruits of our hunts, and in living on plunder.
You, with your needleworked saffron and gleamingly purpled apparel,
You take delight in inertia, indulging yourselves in your dances. 615
Tunics for you come with sleeves, and your bonnets have nice little ribbons.
Phrygian women, not Phrygian men, go to Dindyma's highlands,
Skip to where your double woodwinds please local ears. Up on Ida,
Mother is calling you now with her soft Berecyntian boxwood
Pipes and her timbrels. Stop playing with steel. Leave arms to the real men. 620

Friday, June 24, 2016

Modern Medicine

The sense of relative security that modern medicine has induced is best appreciated by reading a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century correspondence, where the minor or chronic discomfort of one letter may be succeeded in the next, as if magically, by what we now know must have been some version of coronary or pulmonary failure, an internal hemorrhage, a burst appendix, septicemia, acute uremia, or any of the thousand and one viral and bacterial killers for which today we always have names, frequently have lenitives, and sometimes have cures.

a rich, highly-flavoured dish, made of hashed meat, poultry, and herbs, and served cold as a dessert, of Macedonian or Thessalian origin, cf. POLL.6.70 (ματύλλη codd.).—
Especially freq. in the New Comedy acc. to ATH.14.662f: but ματτυολοιχός is prob. cj. for ματιολοιχός (q.v.).

The -λοιχός in Bentley's conjecture ματτυολοιχός is from λείχω = lick.

Mirth

Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 2.499-512:

'Tis mirth that fils the veines with bloud,
More then wine, or sleepe, or food. 500
Let each man keepe his heart at ease,
No man dies of that disease.
He that would his body keepe
From diseases, must not weepe,
But who euer laughes and sings, 505
Neuer he his body brings
Into feuers, gouts, or rhumes,
Or lingringly his longs consumes:
Or meets with aches in the bone,
Or Catharhes, or griping stone: 510
But contented liues for aye,
The more he laughes, the more he may.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Nemesis

Ammianus Marcellinus 14.11.25-26 (tr. John C. Rolfe):

[25] These and innumerable other instances of the kind are sometimes (and would that it were always so!) the work of Adrastia, the chastiser of evil deeds and the rewarder of good actions, whom we also call by the second name of Nemesis. She is, as it were, the sublime jurisdiction of an efficient divine power, dwelling, as men think, above the orbit of the moon; or as others define her, an actual guardian presiding with universal sway over the destinies of individual men. The ancient theologians, regarding her as the daughter of Justice, say that from an unknown eternity she looks down upon all the creatures of earth.

[26] She, as queen of causes and arbiter and judge of events, controls the urn with its lots and causes the changes of fortune, and sometimes she gives our plans a different result than that at which we aimed, changing and confounding many actions. She too, binding the vainly swelling pride of mortals with the indissoluble bond of fate, and tilting changeably, as she knows how to do, the balance of gain and loss, now bends and weakens the uplifted necks of the proud, and now, raising the good from the lowest estate, lifts them to a happy life. Moreover, the storied past has given her wings in order that she might be thought to come to all with swift speed; and it has given her a helm to hold and has put a wheel beneath her feet, in order that none may fail to know that she runs through all the elements and rules the universe.

Exile

Thomas Babington Macaulay, letter to his sisters Fanny and Selina (September 11, 1837), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1881), p. 307:

I have no words to tell you how I pine for England, or how intensely bitter exile has been to me, though I hope that I have borne it well. I feel as if I had no other wish than to see my country again, and die. Let me assure you that banishment is no light matter. No person can judge of it who has not experienced it. A complete revolution in all the habits of life; an estrangement from almost every old friend and acquaintance; fifteen thousand miles of ocean between the exile, and everything that he cares for; all this is, to me at least, very trying. There is no temptation of wealth, or power, which would induce me to go through it again.

A Thought Experiment

John Chrysostom, Homilies on I Corinthians, 34.5 (tr. Hubert Kestell Cornish and John Medley):

And that thou mayest see it more clearly, let us suppose, if it seem good, two cities, the one of rich only, but the other of poor; and neither in that of the rich let there be any poor man, nor in that of the poor any rich; but let us purge out both of the two thoroughly, and see which will be the more able to support itself. For if we find that of the poor able, it is evident that the rich will more stand in need of them.

Now then, in that city of the affluent there will be no manufacturer, no builder, no carpenter, no shoe-maker, no baker, no husbandman, no brazier, no rope-maker, nor any other such trade. For who among the rich would ever choose to follow these crafts, seeing that the very men who take them in hand, when they become rich, endure no longer the discomfort caused by these works? How then shall this our city stand? "The rich," it is replied, "giving money, will buy these things of the poor." Well then, they will not be sufficient for themselves, their needing the others proves that. But how will they build houses? Will they purchase this too? But the nature of things cannot admit this. Therefore they must needs invite the artificers thither, and destroy the law, which we made at first, when we were founding the city. For you remember, that we said, "let there be no poor man within it." But, lo, necessity, even against our will, has invited and brought them in. Whence it is evident, that it is impossible without poor for a city to subsist: since if the city were to continue refusing to admit any of these, it will be no longer a city but will perish. Plainly then it will not support itself, unless it shall collect the poor as a kind of preservers, to be within itself.

But let us look also upon the city of the poor, whether this too will be in a like needy condition, on being deprived of the rich. And first let us in our discourse thoroughly clear the nature of riches, and point them out plainly. What then may riches be? Gold, and silver, and precious stones, and garments silken, purple, and embroidered with gold. Now then that we have seen what riches are, let us drive them away from our city of the poor: and if we are to make it purely a city of poor persons, let not any gold appear there, no not in a dream, nor garments of such quality; and if you will, neither silver, nor vessels of silver. What then? Because of this will that city and its concerns live in want, tell me? Not at all. For suppose first there should be need to build; one does not want gold and silver and pearls, but skill, and hands, and hands not of any kind, but such as have become callous, and fingers hardened, and great strength, and wood, and stones: suppose again one would weave a garment, neither here have we need of gold and silver, but, as before, of hands, and skill, and women to work. And what if one require husbandry, and digging the ground? Is it rich men who are wanted, or poor? It is evident to every one, poor. And when iron too is to be wrought, or any such thing to be done, this is the race of men whereof we most stand in need.

What respect then remains wherein we may stand in need of the rich? Except the thing required be, to pull down this city. For should that sort of people make an entrance, and these philosophers, for (for I call them philosophers, who seek after nothing superfluous,) should fall to desiring gold and jewels, giving themselves up to idleness and luxury; they will ruin everything from that day forward.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Philosophers

Lucian, Icaromenippus 5 (tr. H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler):

MENIPPUS.
In this state of mind, the best I could think of was to get at the truth of it all from the people called philosophers; they of course would be able to give it me. So I selected the best of them, if solemnity of visage, pallor of complexion and length of beard are any criterion—for there could not be a moment's doubt of their soaring words and heaven-high thoughts—and in their hands I placed myself. For a considerable sum down, and more to be paid when they should have perfected me in wisdom, I was to be made an airy metaphysician and instructed in the order of the universe. Unfortunately, so far from dispelling my previous ignorance, they perplexed me more and more, with their daily drenches of beginnings and ends, atoms and voids, matters and forms. My greatest difficulty was that, though they differed among themselves, and all they said was full of inconsistency and contradiction, they expected me to believe them, each pulling me in his own direction.

FRIEND.
How absurd that wise men should quarrel about facts, and hold different opinions on the same things!

There is a class which has recently become conspicuous among men; they are idle, quarrelsome, vain, irritable, lickerish, silly, puffed up, arrogant, and, in Homeric phrase, vain cumberers of the earth. These men have divided themselves into bands, each dwelling in a separate word-maze of its own construction, and call themselves Stoics, Epicureans, Peripatetics, and more farcical names yet. Then they take to themselves the holy name of Virtue, and with uplifted brows and flowing beards exhibit the deceitful semblance that hides immoral lives; their model is the tragic actor, from whom if you strip off the mask and the gold-spangled robe, there is nothing left but a paltry fellow hired for a few shillings to play a part.

Reading in Bed

That night, and for many nights to come, you took large amounts of the refrigerator's contents to bed with you—everything from a jug of orange juice, a quart of ginger ale, candy, a head of lettuce to a box of crackers, cheese and hard-boiled eggs. Your arms loaded, you staggered back into the room and dumped everything on the bed.

You also wanted things to read in bed, and I regularly offered you a book or two that I thought you might not have read. Among other things, you agreed to read Land to the West by Geoffrey Ashe, a book on the weather conditions in antiquity by Rhys Carpenter, and an illustrated book called Secret Societies. The books had to be informational, no novels and certainly no poetry; and the information had to be of such a kind that the man who wrote it used himself somewhere in the book, drawing out of his own person the theory of the book.

Nonetheless, every time I gave you such a book you were sceptical and reluctant to take it, though the next day (you would get up in the early afternoon of the next day) you would be terribly excited about the previous night's reading, with notes and plans to pursue the book. It would start all over again the next night with the same scepticism and reluctance about the next book. You were a hard man to please.

I remember well that first night, after you had finally gone to bed (the whole ritual could take hours), hearing you in the next room furiously turning the pages of the books, munching vigorously on the lettuce and other food. Every few hours that night I was suddenly awakened by a new burst of frantic munching and page-turning. It went on all night.

Prayers of the Utopians

Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia, Book II (tr. Robert M. Adams):

In these prayers each one acknowledges God to be the creator and ruler of the universe and the author of all good things. He thanks God for the many benefits he has received, and particularly for the divine favour which placed him in the happiest of commonwealths and inspired him with religious ideas which he hopes are the truest. If he is wrong in this, and if there is some sort of society or religion more acceptable to God, he prays that God will, in his goodness, reveal it to him, for he is ready to follow wherever he leads. But if their form of society is the best and their religion the truest, then he prays that God will keep him steadfast, and bring other mortals to the same way of life and the same religious faith — unless, indeed, there is something in this variety of religions which delights his inscrutable will.

In the Country

Let the garden be put in order that we may live on vegetables, for the expenses of the town have exhausted my resources. The country will furnish us with herbs, snails, eggs, fish, chickens, and thrushes: surely suppers are more healthy when composed of what the ground produces, and what is fed at home, or caught with nets, than by that which is bought in the market. If we want a more sumptuous repast, your cheese and salt fish will be royal food; if difficult of digestion, we must work in the garden and assist digestion. So get ready; and see that there is at the villa a saw, axe, wedge, pickaxe, rake, and spade, and till we are well we will plant trees for the rising generation.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Difference in Opinions

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Gulliver's Travels IV.v:

Difference in Opinions hath cost many Millions of Lives: For Instance, whether
Flesh be Bread, or Bread be Flesh: Whether the Juice of a certain
Berry be Blood or Wine: Whether Whistling be a Vice or a Virtue:
Whether it be better to kiss a Post, or throw it into the Fire: What is
the best colour for a Coat, whether Black, White, Red, or Grey; and
whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with
many more. Neither are any Wars so furious and bloody, or of so long
Continuance, as those occasioned by Difference in Opinion, especially
if it be in things indifferent.

The expression, 'difference in opinions', is a euphemism for religious differences. The controversy over flesh and bread is of course over the doctrine of transubstantiation, which divides Protestants from Roman Catholics. So also is the controversy over blood and wine. Whistling is a reference to the use of instrumental music in church, which the Church of England favoured and certain Dissenting sects opposed. The post is the cross, and the controversy here is over its veneration or its destruction as a misleading symbol.

Wide Reading

Jerome, Letters 61.1.2 (to Vigilantius; tr. W.H. Fremantle et al.):

Still, as it is my task and study by reading many authors to cull different flowers from as large a number as possible, not so much making it an object to prove all things as to choose what are good, I take up many writers that from the many I may learn many things...

Vomit

Latin 'vomo' is seldom well translated by English 'vomit'; the English word is perhaps always unpleasant, but 'vomo' can be neutral, even impressive. The passages leading into the amphitheatre were called `vomitoria'; in Ennius (Ann. 453 Sk) Tiber 'vomit' its waters into the sea (two comparisons already made by Macrobius (Sat. 6.4.3) in discussing this very passage). 'Vomo' is used by Lucretius of Etna's fiery eruption (1.714) and at Aen. 8.681 of the flames breaking from Augustus' joyful temples at Actium. The poet's suavity here in the Georgics lies in choosing a word which does not have to be disagreeable.

Note the misprint in Jenkyns, op. cit., p. 372, quoting Vergil, Georgics 2.472—the last word of the line should be iuventus, not iuvantus:

God Listens to Our Prayers

Lucian, Icaromenippus 25 (tr. H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler):

So talking, we reached the spot where he was to sit and listen to the prayers. There was a row of openings with lids like well-covers, and a chair of gold by each. Zeus took his seat at the first, lifted off the lid and inclined his ear. From every quarter of Earth were coming the most various and contradictory petitions; for I too bent down my head and listened. Here are specimens. 'O Zeus, that I might be king!' 'O Zeus, that my onions and garlic might thrive!' 'Ye Gods, a speedy death for my father!' Or again, 'Would that I might succeed to my wife's property!' 'Grant that my plot against my brother be not detected.' 'Let me win my suit.' 'Give me an Olympic garland.' Of those at sea, one prayed for a north, another for a south wind; the farmer asked for rain, the fuller for sun. Zeus listened, and gave each prayer careful consideration, but without promising to grant them all;

Our Father this bestowed, and that withheld. [Iliad 16.250]

Righteous prayers he allowed to come up through the hole, received and laid them down at his right, while he sent the unholy ones packing with a downward puff of breath, that Heaven might not be defiled by their entrance.
In one case
I saw him puzzled; two men praying for opposite things and promising the same sacrifices, he could not tell which of them to favour, and experienced a truly Academic suspense of judgement, showing a reserve and equilibrium worthy of Pyrrho himself.

Six-Hour Work Day

Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia, Book II (tr. Robert M. Adams):

Of the twenty-four equal hours into which they divide the day and the night, the Utopians devote only six to work. They work three hours before noon, when they go to lunch. After lunch, they rest for two hours, then go to work for another three hours. Then they have supper, and about eight o'clock (counting the first hour after noon as one) they go to bed, and sleep eight hours.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Ungrateful Readers

Thomas More (1478-1535), preface to Utopia, in the form of a letter to Peter Gilles (tr. Paul Turner):

To tell you the truth, though, I still haven't made up my mind whether I shall publish it at all. Tastes differ so widely, and some people are so humourless, so uncharitable, and so absurdly wrong-headed, that one would probably do far better to relax and enjoy life than worry oneself to death trying to instruct or entertain a public which will only despise one's efforts, or at least feel no gratitude for them. Most readers know nothing about literature — many regard it with contempt. Lowbrows find everything heavy going that isn't completely lowbrow. Highbrows reject everything as vulgar that isn't a mass of archaisms. Some only like the classics, others only their own works. Some are so grimly serious that they disapprove of all humour, others so half-witted that they can't stand wit. Some are so literal-minded that the slightest hint of irony affects them as water affects a sufferer from hydrophobia. Others come to different conclusions every time they stand up or sit down. Then there's the alcoholic school of critics, who sit in public houses, pronouncing ex cathedra verdicts of condemnation, just as they think fit. They seize upon your publications, as a wrestler seizes upon his opponent's hair, and use them to drag you down, while they themselves remain quite invulnerable, because their barren pates are completely bald — so there's nothing for you to get hold of.

Besides, some readers are so ungrateful that, even if they enjoy a book immensely, they don't feel any affection for the author. They're like rude guests who after a splendid dinner-party go home stuffed with food, without saying a word of thanks to their host. So much for the wisdom of preparing a feast of reason at one's own expense for a public with such fastidious and unpredictable tastes, and with such a profound sense of gratitude!

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Ignorance

Lucian, Slander 1 (tr. A.M. Harmon):

It is really a terrible thing, is ignorance, a cause of many woes to humanity; for it envelops things in a fog, so to speak, and obscures the truth and overshadows each man's life. Truly, we all resemble people lost in the dark—nay, we are even like blind men. Now we stumble inexcusably, now we lift our feet when there is no need of it; and we do not see what is near and right before us, but fear what is far away and extremely remote as if it blocked our path. In short, in everything we do we are always making plenty of missteps.

Wall Street

[I]f you talk to them of their Occupation, there is not a Man but will own, 'tis a compleat System of Knavery; that 'tis a Trade founded in Fraud, born of Deceit, and nourished by Trick, Cheat, Wheedle, Forgeries, Falshoods, and all sorts of Delusions; Coining false News, this way good, that way bad, whispering imaginary Terrors, Frights, Hopes, Expectations, and then preying upon the Weakness of those, whose Imaginations they have wrought upon, whom they have either elevated or depress'd.

Id., p. 8:

Is not the whole Doctrine of Stock-jobbing a Science of Fraud? And are not all the Dealers, meer Original Thieves and Pick-Pockets? Nay, do they not own it themselves?

Id., p. 19:

But what Tricking, what Fraud, what laying Plots as deep as Hell, and as far as the ends of the Earth is here? What Cheating of Fathers, and Mothers, and Brothers, gulling Widows, Orphans, couzening the most Wary, and plundering the Unwary? And how much meaner Roberies than these bring the Friendless even to the Gallows every Sessions?

Friday, June 10, 2016

Don't Teach Your Grandmother to Suck Eggs

Jennifer Speake, Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 6th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 312, discussing "Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs," lists the first occurrence as an English translation by John Stevens of Quevedo's Comical Works (London: John Morphew, 1707), p. 403: "You would have me teach my Grandame to suck Eggs, or set up for a Lent Preacher." The English name of the work in question (attributed to, but not actually by Quevedo) is The Dog and the Fever, and the Spanish name is El perro y la calentura. The Spanish being translated is "V. quiere que yo venda miel al colmenero, y que le predique á la cuaresma?"

I remember my old schoolmaster, who was a prodigious great scholar, used often to say, Polly matete cry town is my daskalon. The English of which, he told us, was, That a child may sometimes teach his grandmother to suck eggs.

"Polly matete cry town is my daskalon" is a humorous transcription of πολλοὶ μαθηταὶ κρείττονες διδασκάλων, i.e., Many pupils are cleverer than their teachers, which occurs in Menander, Monostichs 651 Jaekel; Cicero, Letters to Friends 9.7.2; and Greek Anthology 11.176.5 (by Lucilius).

But the real Greek equivalent of "Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs" seems to be ἡ ὗς τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν, as in Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes 11.5 (tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

Now, it is needless to remark that his written speeches have much in them that is harsh and bitter; but in his extempore rejoinders he was also humorous. For instance, when Demades said "Demosthenes teach me! As well might the sow teach Athena." "It was this Athena," said Demosthenes, "that was lately found playing the harlot in Collytus."

But for one who employs it [ridicule] in self-defence the occasion makes it pardonable and at the same time pleasing, as when Demosthenes, in reply to a man who was suspected of being a thief and who mocked him for writing at night, said, "I am aware that I offend you by keeping a light burning," and to Demades who shouted, "Demosthenes would correct me—'the sow correcting Athena,'" he replied, "Yes, your Athena was caught in adultery last year!"

Rare in Greek, the proverb is commoner in Latin as sus Minervam (sc. docet). This is I i 40 in the Adagia of Erasmus. See also A. Otto,
Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1890), p. 224 (#1118).

Thursday, June 09, 2016

Lords and Ladies

What starch-phizz'd, poker-back'd, fine dukes and lords!
Lisping their pretty namby-pamby words!This nincompoop's dubb'd royal—that serene;
But what does such slop-dawdle nonsense mean?
How do these lordships, highnesses, and graces,
Refrain from laughing in each other's faces?
Such things that glitter like gilt gingerbread,
Should be with pap, or else with kava fed.
'Tis strange that those who manage court affairs,
Should not provide them clouts and cacking-chairs.

Uncommon Depravity

When I figure to my mind a representation of uncommon depravity, it is the person of a malignant critic, under the authority of a review, and the security of concealment, vilifying writers of learning, industry, or genius; because their sentiments may not harmonize with the professions of that numerous portion of every society, who, without enquiry, acquiesce in established notions and established practices.

Horses and Children

And it is pitie, that commonlie, more care is had, yea and that emonges verie wise men, to finde out rather a cunnynge man for their horse, than a cunnyng man for their children. They say nay in worde, but they do so in deede. For, to the one, they will gladlie give a stipend of 200. Crounes by yeare, and loth to offer to the other, 200. shillinges. God, that sitteth in heaven, laugheth their choice to skorne, and rewardeth their liberalitie as it should: for he suffereth them, to have tame and well ordered horse, but wilde and unfortunate Children: and therfore in the ende they finde more pleasure in their horse, than comforte in their children.

The same in modern spelling, from The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, ed. John Allen Giles, Vol. III (London: John Russell Smith, 1864), p. 104:

And it is pity, that commonly more care is had, yea and that among very wise men, to find out rather a cunning man for their horse, than a cunning man for their children. They say nay in word, but they do so in deed: for to the one they will gladly give a stipend of two hundred crowns by the year, and loth to offer to the other two hundred shillings. God that sitteth in heaven laugheth their choice to scorn, and rewardeth their liberality as it should; for he suffereth them to have tame and well-ordered horse, but wild and unfortunate children; and therefore in the end they find more pleasure in their horse than comfort in their children.

A Character

Ralph Johnson, The Scholars Guide From the Accidence to the University (London: Tho. Pierrepont, 1665), p. 15:

A Character.

A Character is a witty and facetious description of the nature and qualities of some person, or sort of people.

RULES for making it.

1. Chuse a Subject, viz. such a sort of men as will admit of variety of observation, such be, drunkards, usurers, lyars, taylors, excise-men, travellers, pedlars, merchants, tapsters, lawyers, an upstart gentleman, a young Justice, a Constable, an Alderman, and the like.

2. Express their natures, qualities, conditions, practices, tools, desires, aims or ends, by witty Allegories or Allusions, to things or terms in nature, or art, of like nature and resemblance, still striving for wit and pleasantness, together with tart nipping jerks about their vices or miscarriages.

3. Conclude with some witty and neat passage, leaving them to the effect of their follies or studies.

Intelligent Design

Pleasure seems to me to be the aim of life and the only useful thing in the world. God has designed it thus. He Who created women, perfumes, light, beautiful flowers, good wine, thoroughbred horses, greyhounds and angora cats; Who did not say to His angels: 'Be virtuous', but: 'Be loving'; and Who has given us a mouth more sensitive than the rest of our skin for kissing women; eyes which can look up to see the light; a subtle sense of smell to breathe in the souls of flowers; strong thighs to grip the flanks of stallions and fly as fast as thought without railway or steam engine; delicate hands to stroke the long heads of greyhounds, the velvety backs of cats, and the satin shoulders of creatures with very little virtue; God Who, in short, has given to us alone the threefold glorious privilege of drinking without being thirsty, of striking a light, and of making love all year round, which distinguishes us from the animals much more than does the custom of reading journals and making charters.

This Will Do

George Faulkner (1703-1775), "To the Reader," in The Works of the Reverend Dr. Jonathan Swift, Vol. I (Dublin: George Faulkner, 1772), pp. v-xvii (at viii), discussing Swift's demands prior to the publication of his Works:

That the Editor should attend him early every Morning, or when most convenient, to read to him, that the Sounds might strike the Ear, as well as the Sense the Understanding, and had always two Men Servants present for this Purpose; and when he had any Doubt, he would ask them the Meaning of what they heard; which, if they did not comprehend, he would alter and amend until they understood it perfectly well, and then would say, This will do; for I write to the Vulgar, more than to the Learned.

Non Denique Homines Dis Curae

However, it is a sketch of human vanity, for every individual to imagine the whole universe is interested in his meanest concern. If he hath got cleanly over a kennel, some angel unseen descended on purpose to help him by the hand; if he hath knocked his head against a post, it was the devil, for his sins, let loose from hell, on purpose to buffet him. Who, that sees a little paltry mortal, droning, and dreaming, and drivelling to a multitude, can think it agreeable to common good sense, that either Heaven or Hell should be put to the trouble of influence or inspection, upon what he is about?

Sniffing Out Heresy

[W]e are indebted to Consentius for
what is in many ways the funniest story (Evelyn Waugh before his time)
of late-antique Christian heresy-hunting. In a letter to Augustine, Consentius
tells of sending an orthodox spy from Minorca to the mainland of
Spain to infiltrate the "Priscillianists" there.255 The spy is about as successful
as one would expect a half-trained FBI agent to be on attempting to infiltrate a communist cell in Ogallala, Nebraska, in the 1950s, when
the "cell" turned out to be three local schoolteachers and a librarian who
enjoyed sharing copies of the New Republic and talking about them at coffee
hour after church on Sunday. Every appearance of success is reported
back to headquarters, but we have to doubt whether the object of the infiltration
is what the secret agent thinks it is. When the matter finally
comes into the open, Consentius is dismayed that the Spanish bishops
who take up the matter are far less seriously moved than he thinks they
ought to be, and his indignation is marked throughout his long letter to
Augustine.

255Ep. 11*.

Id., p. 338:

Where the letter number is
marked by an asterisk (*) the reference is to the new series of
letters discovered by Johannes Divjak and published at Vienna
in 1981.

Friday, June 03, 2016

How You Walk

How you walk is a repeated topic of commentary by Lucian. You should hope to 'walk like a man' (which is linked to a body bronzed by the sun, a masculine glint in the eye, an alert appearance).82 You don't want to walk 'with an unsteady shimmy' (which is linked to a floppy neck, a woman's glance, a soft voice, the smell of perfume, scratching your head with one finger, and carefully coiffed curls).83 The figure of Blame in one of Lucian's divine comedies attacks even the god Dionysus for his 'walk': 'you all know how female and girly he is in his nature ... '84 In particular, however, it is philosophers who seem to have a specially noticeable style of walking (which you may think harder to spot these days around the university or on the street). Thrasycles' walk is 'orderly' (eye-brows high, fierce gaze, elegant turn out);85 Diogenes' walk matches his intense expression.86 The uncultured book-buyer is mocked for imitating the walk of a philosopher;87 and a string of philosophers are immediately distinctive because of their gait. The longest description of what 'the walk' should be like is this:

I saw them walking in an orderly fashion, decently dressed, always in thought, masculine, mostly with close-cropped hair nothing degenerate, none of that hyper-indifference which marks the simply mad Cynic, but of middling constitution, which everyone says is best.88

82 41.9.83 41.11.84 52.4.85 25.54.86 27.10.87 31.21.88 70.18.

See also Jan Bremer, "Walking, Standing and Sitting in Ancient Greek Culture," in Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, edd., A Cultural History of Gesture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 15-35 (at 16-23).

Disappearance of Youth

I see and hear
that many a person laments about the disappearance of his property;
I, on the other hand, only lament about the disappearance of my youth,
the disappearance of my carefree attitude
and of that what I used to do at that time 5
without any consciousness about it because the earth provided me with support.
Now, being hampered by bodily failure,
my head, back, legs, hands, and feet alert me to the approaching old age.
Whatever sins I might have committed without any need,
you, sir body, make me pay for this recklessness 10
with paleness, red eyes,
wrinkles, grey hair: I can no longer do big jumps.
My heart, my brain, my tongue, and my strides have become hard to move,
I am walking bent over,
my trembling weakens all my limbs. 15
When I sing I only intonate "O dear!"
I sing nothing else day in and day out;
my tenor has become rather rough.

My wavy blond hair
that once covered my head with curls, 20
now displays its beauty in grey and black,
bald spots form a round shield,
my red lips are turning blue,
which makes me look disgusting to the beloved.
My teeth have become 25
loose and ugly and do no longer serve for chewing.
Even if all material in this world belonged to me,
I would not be able to get the teeth renewed,
nor to purchase a carefree attitude.
This would be possible only in a dream. 30
My abilities to fight, to jump, and to run rapidly
have turned into limping.
Instead of singing, I do nothing but utter coughing sounds.
My breathing has become heavy.
The cold earth would be the best for me 35
because I have lost my strength and am not worth much.